Drones deployed to monitor Brazil forest growth

[SÃO PAULO] Measuring the height of Brazil’s towering rainforests can be a tall order. But an international team of researchers say they are working together to turn unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, into efficient, low-cost data collectors that can monitor the progress of forest restoration.

该团队开发了一个配备了三维激光扫描和高光谱成像系统的无人机，该系统能够生成高分辨率地图并在给定区域为不同波长收集数百个图像。

They used the GatorEye system to assess the results of a mixed-species forest restoration experiment in the Atlantic Forest of south-eastern Brazil, concluding in their findings that the technology showed “enormous potential”.

“The study’s outcomes have a huge potential of practical application and might help decision-makers to sustain public environmental policies,”

Ricardo Ribeiro Rodrigues，圣保罗大学Luiz de Queiroz农业学院beplay下载官网西西软件

Researchers say new cost-effective technologies are needed to monitor the structure and function of restored forests on a broader scale than existing methods, if ambitious international goals of restoring at least 350 million hectares of forest globally by 2030 are to be met.

The team, including scientists from the Universities of Florida and Connecticut in the US and NASA, used a UAV-borne lidar system to collect and process forest data. They measured two of the main variables used to evaluate forest structure: the height of the forest canopy and the forest biomass.

Lidar is a surveying method that measures distance to a target by illuminating the target with pulsed laser light and measuring the reflected pulses with a sensor.

Their outcomeswill be publishedin July in the国际应用地球观察与地理信息杂志.

圣保罗大学Luiz de Queiroz农业学院的生物学家Ricardo Ribeiro Rodrigues，森林恢复专家beplay下载官网西西软件SciDev.Net：“该研究的结果具有巨大的实际应用潜力，可能有助于决策者维持公共环境政策。”beplay足球体育的微博

他补充说：“当然，我们仍然需要进行现场监控。”“但是，这种新方法使我们能够将现场数据推送到更大的尺度，从而确保监视和恢复策略的准确性。”

冠层高度和生物量的升高对于减少外星植物物种的重要性很重要，外来植物物种可能会损害环境以及其他物种的生长，这对于热带森林的发展至关重要。beplay足球体育的微博

Researchers say such data is crucial for planning new forest restoration programmes and evaluating the success of ongoing projects.

不参与开发该系统的巴西环境研究与研究中心的生物学家Ramon Felipe Bicudo Da Silva告诉beplay足球体育的微博SciDev.Net：“这些数据可以帮助研究人员改善恢复项目的结果，同时促进本地植被覆盖的增加，并重新建立曾经由森林产生的生态过程和环境服务。”beplay足球体育的微博

有关恢复项目中森林结构的数据通常由地面研究人员收集。但是，这种方法是劳动密集型的，很难应用于非常大的地区。

研究人员有时试图克服这些mitations by using aeroplanes equipped with three-dimensional laser scanning systems to cover large forest areas in a single flight, says Danilo Alves de Almeida, a forestry engineer at the Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture, and lead author of the study. But, he adds, monitoring in this way is expensive and reliant on companies that own aeroplanes.

Bicudo da Silva stressed that while the study was innovative and the method appeared to be feasible, further studies must explore the potential of the technology from an economic perspective.

“The remaining question is its economic viability and geographic coverage capacity for making it a tool with greater reach, allowing monitoring large areas,” he added.

这篇文章是由Scidev.net的拉丁美洲和加勒比海台制作的，并为清晰而编辑。

这项研究应在国际应用地球观察杂志和地理信息杂志上发表，得到了scidev.net的捐助者FAPESP的支持。